Linda Gregerson, Caroline Walker Bynum Distinguished University Professor of English Language and Literature, University of Michigan; Chancellor, Academy of American Poets

In Book 11 of the Confessions, Augustine attempts to contemplate the mystery of time and, in particular, the temporal embeddedness that makes human beings particularly unqualified to comprehend eternity. In this lecture, I will be tracing the same double imperative in the poetry of John Milton: apprehension in and of time while in the hope […]

Linda Gregerson, Caroline Walker Bynum Distinguished University Professor of English Language and Literature, University of Michigan; Chancellor, Academy of American Poets

Linda Gregerson will read a selection of her poems prior to her lecture on Milton. This reading will be held in 300 Wheeler Hall at 2pm. Linda Gregerson is the author of six collections of poetry, most recently of Prodigal: New and Selected Poems (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2015). Among her earlier books, Magnetic North (2007) […]

Video Showing and Discussion, with an Introduction and Response by Robert Alter In my talk I will discuss ways in which religious rituals affect civilian protocols in Israel and Palestine. To explore this link between ritual and routine, I will conduct a chronological overview of my work, which, in examining the connections between religious codes […]

Avinoam Shalem, Riggio Professor of the History of the Arts of Islam, Columbia University; Robert Sterling Clark Visiting Professor at the Clark Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts.

The “Sacred” and the “Holy” (haram in Arabic and, to some extent, al-quds or al-muqaddas), are Semitic words (see Herem and Kadosh in Hebrew) denoting the act of separation, parting, or setting aside, and imply the apparent human faculty of setting distinctive borders between holy and profane zones. Constrained to time, these spaces become chronotopes. […]

Finbarr Barry Flood, William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of the Humanities, Institute of Fine Arts and Department of Art History, New York University

The image of Islam in the West has been consistently informed by the idea that Islam fosters distinctive attitudes towards the image. Recent controversies about Islam, aniconism and iconoclasm are typical in this respect, often taking the idea of an Islamic Bilderverbot (image prohibition) as a given. Seen from the perspective of the longue durée, […]

Film Screening and Discussion The documentary If I Give My Soul began the day that co-director Andrew Johnson checked into a Brazilian prison, where he would spend two weeks living as an inmate. He ate the same food, slept in the same cells and went through the routines as if he were incarcerated in an […]